Lightroom was always designed around and recommended as a single-catalog workflow solution. While many people use multiple catalogs and Lightroom can function moderately well in that environ, that isn't its first design criteria. I am changing your question to a feature request to see if others will vote for it.

I just split my catalog into smaller catalogs because it was getting soooooo slooooowwwww. So with all due respect, if Adobe LR was designed to only have a single catalog, then it was designed poorly.

I too just ran into this issue. I split my catalog because with over 25000 photos, it had become too slow, and even on a super new MAC with all the memory available to mankind, LR was lagging. Now I realize that LR can only sync folders from a single catalog, and of course I find that very lacking and lackluster. What's more, my recent discovery means that I find the new LR Classic CC and CC to be even less useful in a connected world.

In my less than humble opinion, I think that Smart Collections should be able to be turned into mobile collections with a single click. I think users should be able to make a folder mobile/sync with a single click, and I think users should be able to sync folders from various catalogs, especially given the physical limitations of large catalogs.

Lastly, Adobe should ditch the CC version and make the Classic CC version more versatile in terms of synching. The current arrangement is more than confusing, and honestly, even though I've been a LR user since day one, I am actively reorganizing my photos and looking for a cataloging system that does not include Adobe LR. While LR is still invaluable for processing photos, it has very quickly become unusable for cataloging and maintaining photos.

Scott, agreed on many counts. Don't forget to say these things if and when Adobe sends you surveys about the product.

I've also been shopping for alternatives to the new-and-disimproved Lightroom ecosystem.

Nearly every day, I wonder who designs this software and whether they have ever worked as a professional photographer (because LR wasn't designed for high volume or efficiency). I also wonder if they have eyes (because it's not designed to be readable -- What's up with the GREY on GREY microtext???).

here’s what a support rep posts to me - word to word - via your twitter support handle - we were troubleshooting the cause of poor performance and extreme CPU usage when merely switching from the library to the develop module :

Hi VIctoria, I've read many of your articles about Lightroom but I must say this discussion is not where it should be about. LR classic still lacks performance on big catalogues and that is where this thread is all about. LR users are looking for ways to improve the performance of LR. LR offers them this in splitting catalogues. With the arrival of LR in the cloud the problem of multiple catalogues popped up as it is in this discussion. As I said before, get LR on par with other software and there will be no need anymore for multiple catalogues. Kind Regards, Frans van Velzen

(a) if the twitter support rep is repeatedly giving misinformation, why does Adobe even offer support on twitter and

(b) to second Frans’ opinion, the Multi-catalog sync request is as much being driven by absolutely poor LR Classic performance as it is by the genuine need to maintain syncable separate work and personal catalogs.

But if I were to pick one thing I desperately need, it surely is to see LR not using 600% of my CPU when I do the most basic stuff like selecting a different photo in the develop module or switching from the Library to the develop module.

(c) it’s good to hear that LR is tested on min 100,000 images. That being the case what is the min hardware spec for which LR’s Develop module won’t choke up the system and will work reasonably responsively with 100,000 RAW images each having some edits and / or adjustments ?

I’ve been discussing my LR performance issues for almost 18 months now with the twitter support at periodic intervals and the pattern is that they ask me to try with a small catalog .

The advice being offered to paying subscribers is not at all consistent.

Why they give misinformation, goodness knows. But trying to offer support in so few characters is a nightmare, so Twitter's generally a bad choice for support issues anyway. Start a separate thread here on your performance issues and we'll do our best to help figure out what's going wrong for you.

I'm not arguing against the request for syncing multiple catalogs for separating work and personal, but realistically, based on everything I've heard about Adobe's direction for Lightroom Classic sync, I don't think it'll happen. They've very clearly said that sync development is being focused on CC, with Classic focusing on its traditional desktop usage.

Adobe hasn't shared specific specs because there are so many variables and performance tolerance levels too (one person's fast will be another one's slow) but let's get down to specifics in your own thread. Even their most basic minimum spec should be able to handle 3000 photos, although some things will be slower at minimum spec.

Thanks for your response again - much appreciated. It seems like you get caught in the crossfire between dissatisfied adobe customers and Adobe’s product management. I do very much appreciate what you and Rikk are doing to help us out, and I feel sad and dismayed that no one from Adobe is chipping in here on these forums to provide “official” input. It seems like Adobe is no longer interested in hearing the voice of the customer.

Which brings me to Adobe on Twitter - they provide official support via Twitter DMs via @AdobeCare using a tweetbot menu which connects you to a support agent, and they loop in an “expert” if needed. It is practically a chat, with no character limits.

I have sent them at least a dozen videos of the performance issues at various times through these DMs and there is no character restriction. They have sent back the usual suggestions like enabling or disabling the GPU (depending on what the current state is) and then, trying a new catalog with fewer images, trying a new OS version, and finally installing a new LR version, deleting all previews, creating 1:1 previews, adding smart previews, hiding the histogram which I have done with no respite.

I have gone through many other forum complaints with the same theme as myself and a lot of them have been unresolved.

Your responses make me feel optimistic that maybe it is working well for you - please can you confirm that LR Develop does in fact work in a responsive manner for you, with a smallish catalog, after having made local adjustments to RAW photos ? If yes, then I would be happy to add a new thread about performance on the forum.

Additionally, Twitter, while useful for some support interactions isn't the best place to go when you have a detailed performance-related question. Those things are better expressed and solved in more than a couple of hundred characters...

Thank you for confirming that LR is speedy for you in the develop module. Much appreciated. Can you also help me with the system config that you are using, so that I can compare with mine?

Ps: i May have mentioned it on my earlier response, but In case it helps anyone else, when I spoke about Twitter support, Adobe’s own support site has a banner on top saying that their regular support channel has long wait periods and users should DM them at the @AdobeCare handle. Once a person connects via DM they are taken through a menu and connected to an exec and there’s no character limit on that interaction.

I can willingly confirm that LR works at a speedy pace even with 100K+ catalog on a standard resolution monitor. Some things get a bit slower on my 5K monitor, which is to be expected as it's processing a lot more pixels to service a high res monitor. I'm currently using a 2014 5K iMac as my primary machine, but even my old MacBook Pro is serviceable. My business partner is using a 2010 Mac Pro and equally has no complaints. Decent performance is possible.

Regarding Twitter, I should be telling you that Adobe Corporate has all the answers and the official support channels are all equally comparable but... there's a notable difference between the "support staff" that man the usual channels (like Twitter, phone/chat support, etc.) and the "real" people who hang out here. There's a reason I spend my time supporting this forum instead of the primary user to user forums... and guys like Rikk and some of the main LR engineers hanging out here are the primary reasons. This is where you get it "from the horses mouth", as it were.

Hi Victoria, thanks for the clarification about the hardware. I’m using a 15” Retina MBP for LR as I’m mostly on the move. Do you think that’s the reason why I’m facing these performance issues with the develop module? As soon as I go to the develop module and make any edit, the CPU spikes to 150-200-400-600% with each edit that I make. Should LR only be used on desktop Mac OS systems?

I’ve tried various steps such as disabling GPU, not upgrading to Mojave, reinstalling LR, disabling writing edits to XMP and so on, to no avail. That’s when I went down this tangent of splitting my catalog.

The Retina display certainly requires a lot more processing power, because it's having to process a lot more pixels in order to show them on the screen. That's true of retina desktop computers as well as laptops. I'd leave GPU enabled when using a retina screen, as that's an issue the GPU is designed to help with.

Have you started that new thread yet? Let's troubleshoot there, rather than cluttering up in inboxes of people who are interested in multiple catalog syncing.

Thanks for changing this to a feature request - that's effectively what I wanted it to be, but obviously missed that option!

I hear what you are saying about the single-catalog workflow solution, but interestingly in the 3 or so years since I have been using lightroom I have never seen anything official about that, or in any of the marketing/setup instruction etc. Not saying that I went through everything with a fine tooth comb, but my approach to technology has always been to explore the capabilities of a system and see how it can be best adapted to suit the local requirements. So when a feature is provided in software, you would expect that you should realistically be able to use it. I would have thought if they were so adamant about the single catalog workflow issue, then they should have removed the ability to have multiple catalogs in the first place? Why put a feature in there that you are just going to restrict people on down the track.

I say all this with some experience as a software developer for over 20 years, so it's not like I am not aware of the issues and considerations that need to be taken when designing and developing software packages. And I'm not lost on the gap that exists between the design intentions and the end-user usage scenarios that constantly plague developers, but bridging that gap has always been the sign of great software packages.

In fact the main reason I went to the effort of even posting such a question is due to the fact that I have been positively impressed with the shift in responsiveness of Adobe since the rollout of creative cloud and the fact that they can, and often do, react quickly to feature requests and new technologies and implement those changes in a very timely fashion (well in comparison to the historical software lifecycle anyway!)

So I hope other that may be interested in this feature can raise their voices and be heard so that Adobe may look at what they can do to make this happen :-)

There's nothing official. However, while you can use Lightroom with multiple catalogues, it works best as a single catalogue, as you see when you examine the features. For example, there is no cross-catalogue searching or other cross-catalogue functions, while multi-catalogue features are designed around the need to move work around computers (eg the Export as Catalag and Import from Another Catalog features).

But LR does allow multiple catalogues, so how do you expect a multi-catalogue LrM to operate? Do you expect a sort of one-to-one relationship, so you'd open catalogue A in LrM, then catalogue B etc? Or do you expect LrM to be a single overarching interface, so the same picture may exist in both a laptop and a desktop catalogue and LrM edits will propagate to each?

Also, rather than claiming there is a real business case scenario (which there may be), it's better to outline what it is.

I also use multiple catalogs in Lightroom. I have over 30,000 photos and maintenance as a single catalog was cumbersome. Load and save times are long, and I had to carry around a dedicated external hard drive to work with that catalog, as it exceeded 500 gb. adobe revel allowed multi catalog support and this should be a feature in Lightroom mobile...I wish adobe revel was still supported.

In addition, Lightroom mobile does not support sharing of albums, only single photos, which is another limitation related to adobe revel.

i shoot a lot when travelling and i have a notebook with me so i start out every journey with a fresh catalog. i get up to 10-20k raw images per trip. added to that are timelapses and thousands of gopro joegs.

merging all this into a single catalog is just madness. it becomes impossible to move around on mobile disks or backup into cloud storage. thumbnails/smart previews are all in one gigantic folder eating diskspace like there is no tomorrow.

so i am going to stick to multi catalog.

my main reason for getting lr mobile was rating/sorting on the go, i hoped i could crowdsource the rating and sorting with friends and family. that becomes impossible if i can only have one catalog at a time in mobile.

as for implementation, i think lr mobile should just be able to store multiple catalogs. add one more hierachy level on top. make them visible in the mobile apps? i don't really care. i'd be fine with a warning if my collection names collide and being forced to keep them unique across catalogs.

Reading the original question and having just installed Lightroom CC I agree with most comments: there is definitely a compelling need to allow syncing with more than one catalog.

As most comments make the point: I have a travelling Macbook and a big powerful desktop and use generally two catalogs. If I am travelling, I would like to push some photos via syncing to iOS devices. When back, I work on more photos on my desktop and would like to push some of them as well on my iOS devices. Putting one catalog on a NAS drive is not practical as when travelling I will need a local copy.

Call me cynical, but from the point of view of Adobe, allowing only single catalog syncing is an interesting deal. They may think I will put it in their Cloud so that I can access it from both computers. Then the volume will increase and I probably will have to pay extra for more space?. But then, even though I have not tried it, I have reservations as to whether the performances will be good enough. And if travelling to a location where internet access is slow or inexistant, I would still need a local catalog. Merging catalog is a feature I have not yet fully mastered in particular if vertual copies of photos are involved.

So, after this long argument, we definitely need multiple catalog syncing!

" If I am travelling, I would like to push some photos via syncing to iOS devices. "

Then log into https://lightroom.adobe.com/ and you can drag photos from their folders and drop into your browser window. The photos will upload to Adobe's server, and previews will sync down to iOS devices. The original will appear in your catalogue at home.

More generally, since smart previews were introduced it is more practical to take your main catalogue on trips. The catalogue itself is not big, and you don't need to take the original pictures if you want to work on any existing pictures - you can do a lot of work with just the smart previews.

Is there anyway to push a collection of photos to Lightroom Mobile without using the web interface? Should I be able to do this in Lightroom on desktop/laptop?

Let's I have a collection of travel photos on desktop at home AND a collection of wedding photos on laptop in the office. And I want to use Lightroom Mobile to show these photos to my friends and clients. Right now I cannot do this easily with the desktop version of Lightroom.

Ideally I can push these collections to the cloud from desktop and laptop simultaneously. And the my friends and clients can rate and comment on these photos with their phones. I can choose to "mount" the wedding collection on my desktop at home, but I am not forced to do so if I really just want to use my work laptop to edit these photos.

I work as photographer and create a new catalogue for each job. Simple reason is, that on a job you make 10000 pictures for example, the next job again and so on.
With so many pictures altogether, you have in one year several hundred thousand pictures. After a job is finished, with selection, editing and all that stuff, I save them twice external and put them away on archive. And when i need it again, I get the HD with all the file, including the lightroom catalogue. I open the catalogue and have everything in place very fast. My thinking is that in seperating the projects catalogues, you keep a better overview of all the work you have done. Also when sharing a project with an external editor you hand over the catalogue and thats it.
The sync on a cloud would be interesting for me only if i could sync for example my
selection or finished editing collection on the phone or pad and show different jobs on occasion.
So I would vote for multiple catalogue sync

It would help a lot if Lr could work from a Catalogue stored on an external HD.

Then one could simply connect that drive to whichever computer one was using at the time and also use a Sync operation to copy only newer files or metadata to update the resident catalogue on the other computer.

I resolved this by putting my files on a removable USB drive, and I can plug it into whatever computer I'm on. Both the photos and the catalogs are on the removable drive, so the relative path remains the same no matter which machine i'm on, and it works seamlessly.

Scott, that's a workable solution if your files will FIT on a removable USB drive.

Right now, I'm literally (not figuratively, LITERALLY) driving a file server around in order to maintain access to my original photos. Performing a full backup of this server literally takes more than a day.

Professionals can have hundreds of thousands of images to work with. Keeping them in one catalog is simply not practical for many reasons. A single catalog file endangers all your work when it inevitably corrupts (as one of mine did last week). A single catalog file has one keyword hierarchy for everything. Merging my catalogs would produce a file that is GIGABYTES in size. The preview directories would take up TERABYTES in addition to the original photos.

Contrary to Rikk's assertion, Lightroom Classic was not "designed" to work with a single catalog. If it were, the File menu wouldn't have options to open and close catalogs. There wouldn't be preferences stored on a per-catalog basis. (In contrast, the new Lightroom is apparently designed for NO catalogs, which is equally impossible in my scenario. The new product isn't even remotely ready for professional use.)

> Lightroom Classic was not "designed" to work with a single catalog. If it were, the File menu wouldn't have options to open and close catalogs.

A little bit of a history lesson... Lightroom 1.0 could only use a single catalog, because that's the way it was designed. Import/Export catalogs were added in 1.1 so that people could take part of their catalog off to another computer, or start a new shoot on another computer and merge it in later. The intention was never that people would have lots of little catalogs on the same computer, but that's the way it's ended up being used by some people.

An additional data point, Daniel. I am a professional. I have hundreds of thousands of images in a single catalog - the same catalog with which I started in Lightroom 1.2. I have never seen a catalog corruption of my own catalog and even if I did, I maintain a robust backup strategy- something more difficult to do in the multi-catalog verse. Your work is no more safe in a single catalog than multiples - one corruption and data is lost.

I prefer a single keyword hierarchy. My catalog is GB in size (7 to be precise) and the previews while large still are not even half a terabyte.

Victoria beat me to the history of Lightroom demonstrating original design and intent.

My business partner does raw editing for other professional photographers, so speed is of the essence. Currently his catalog is running over 14GB, and it's been bigger.

And the biggest catalog I know of is over 7 million photos. That's a bit slow to open and back up, of course, but beyond that...

Many professionals work with two catalogs - a smaller working catalog, including everything that needs to sync to the cloud and is currently being worked on, and a larger archive catalog that they don't need to access very often.

I couldn’t disagree more with Ricks assessment. I just split my catalog because it became too slow, and the performance was immediately evident. Whenever I do a large photo shoot, like a dance performance, I always give it its own catalog because if I try and use my main catalog it’s just too slow, and I have a very powerful machine.

If LR really was designed to have a monolithic catalog then they did an extremely poor job of it.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been using LR since day one, and I’m dead sure that large catalogs become extremely slow. Mine was 11 GB when I slplit it. Anyway, regardless of what the marketing specs say, or what the champions insist on, real world users all seem to agree that a monolithic catalog causes performance issues. And now with this classic cc and cc and poorly thought out product confusion with dualing versions, neither of which handles cloud sharing well, I’m on the search for an alternative.

For processing raw photos and batch editing, LR is awesome. But for continued storage, key word searching, maintenance and cloud sharing, it’s really not at all very good.

My experience with 3-4 dozen 250K catalogs on which I've consulted regarding speed issues is that in very isolated areas, performance may improve i.e. launch time, backup time and large scale metadata writing. Catalog size will not typically have an effect on Grid scrolling, Grid/Loupe switch, Develop/Grid switch, Loupe/Develop walking, Develop slider performance, Import/Export processing.

If you are seeing improved performance, I am happy for you but not convinced it is due to catalog size. The real world does not all seem to agree that monolithic catalogs cause performance issue. I see the question asked a lot and the answer from those who work with large catalogs regularly seems pretty consistent.

Regardless, this thread is concerned with multi syncing and we should return to that discussion. Feel free to start a new thread about single vs multi catalog performance perceptions if you like.

The name is spelled "Rikk" by the way - unless you are speaking about someone else.

Rikk, some of your "...very isolated areas..." are frankly more common than what you listed; e.g., importing, preview building, keywording, Smart Collection building, editing Smart Collections, etc. In short, just about everything one does in Library is impacted by the size of the catalog.

Hardware is, of course, very important. I started using LR with 3.0 on a Toshiba with 8GB, moved to a MacBook Pro with 16GB from LR 4 to LR 6, and then to a MacPro with 128GB.

As my catalog progressed from a couple MB to—as of this morning—3,919,530 images (a whopping 29.4GB catalog) I have seen performance degrade unless and until the hardware was upgraded.

Sometimes, the performance degraded after an upgrade of LR; LR 7.5 was a pig compared to LR 6; LR 8 was a marked improvement over 7.5. Sometimes the OS improved the performance; Mojave was a Godsend for LR 7.5 and 8 (unless you owned an iMac).

I recently upgraded the 1TB SSD in the MacPro to a 2TB SSD from QWC—four times the read/write speed of the OEM drive. Now my catalog loads in less than two minutes, down from over 20 minutes. (My LR application is on the internal SSD, the catalog and all other files are on a dedicated external G-Tech 8TB RAID with Thunderbolt. All images are on another dedicated external G-Tech 20TB Raid with Thunderbolt.)

Moving to multiple catalogs is simply a non-starter. Presets, Smart Collections, Keyword Sets, keywords—no way to sync them easily across multiple catalogs.

As for syncing to the mobiles apps or the cloud—I never water down my whisky and I do not use LR on a bloody iphone (except for a synced collection to show clients as a portfolio).

However, I am still concerned and still hope that Adobe would change the underlying database to increase performance, referential integrity, and keyword accuracy. I am also pretty much at the end of the line in available hardware upgrades at least until 2020 as Apple has indicated no next-gen MacPro in 2019.

I am in Botswana through the end of the first week of January. The lions are tripping over themselves for a photo op; the cheetahs are sitting on the roof of the Land Rover. My catalog will definitely be over 4 million images before December ends.

I hear you Victoira, and I respect your opinion—otherwise I wouldn't have bought your FAQ books year in and year out.

However, in the day job (pharmaceuticals and medical devices) that has supported my photography since I gave up on F1 back in 186, I routinely see programs able to handle tens of millions of images without a performance issue on Windoze boxes no where near as powerful as some of the computers I possess or the users on this forum possess.

The different explain this divergence in performance, you ask? In the real world of medical and pharmaceutical science we do not use open source freebie crap such as SQLite. Our systems are built on Oracle, DB2, or MS SQL.

I have used systems built on full referential database platforms with 4th- or 5th-level referential integrity (so as NOT to create duplicate or triplicate images as LR still does with 8.1) which handle upwards of 60 million images for a Phase III Clinical Trial oncology drug with instant response and no crashing.

How much would it cost...really!...for Adobe to build Lightroom on a firm foundation instead of some garbage they downloaded for free off of the internet?

I for one, would gladly pay at least double what Adobe lifts from my checkbook each month just ot have something which I could use.

This holiday week, in the quiet of the Okavango Delta, I am going to try ON1 Photo Raw 2019 migration facility. If it works, good-bye Adobe. (ON1 is using MS SQL...not SQLite.)

I don't claim to be an expert on systems managing 60 million images, and there's a reason why not... Lightroom isn't targeted at that audience. And while you'd be happy to pay double, most Lightroom users wouldn't. So if you can find a ready-built system that is targeted at that audience, go for it! Use what works for you.

The Lightroom groundwork was laid more than 12 years ago when Adobe was breaking new ground, so it is certainly possible they'd make different decisions based on the information that's now available. On1 clearly has a lot to thank Adobe for in that regard, as they've been able to base their decisions on concrete information, rather than guesswork.

Let us know how you get on with the migration tools. In my experience, they rarely live up to the hype, but I live in hope that someday I'll be proven wrong. Maybe this is the year!

I like LR for its beautiful design and functionality. The only thing that needs Adobe's attention for LR now is PERFORMANCE (sorry for screaming) and for that reason I concur with all the above contributors. Performance is not on PAR with other photo editors.

+1 on this feature request. it's a pain that LrM only syncs with one catalog. Since it's only syncing collections, it really shouldn't matter what catalog makes the sync request. And I'd venture to say that anyone who uses Lr for professional work is using multiple catalogs.

Yes - different strokes for different folks I guess. I recently started some commercial photoshoots and putting those in the same catalog didn't completely make sense. I am aware that Lightroom does give you enough options to separate things within one catalog, but I guess it just makes sense when you can cut down on distractions (family photos, dog photos, the photos from the last trip that your auntie made and things of that nature!)

I agree with the comment that it really shouldn't matter where the shared collection comes from. The cloud storage should function just like OneDrive and can be accessed and synced by any catalog from any device.

Lightroom Mobile: Please add the ability to Sync multiple CATALOGS at the same time. Have tiered pricing for larger cloud capacities...er whatever you need to do to justify it. JUST PLEASE add support for multiple catalogs. :)

Add me to the list that votes to allow lightroom mobile to sync to different catalogs. I do portrait, wedding, real estate as well as professional and college sports. I use a macbook for all my sports photography and then my iMac to process all other types. I use a Nikon D4 with the WT5 transmitter connecting to an FTP server. I then have an app that looks for any new photos on the FTP server and brings them into a Watched folder on the HD for either computer. Then I use a plugin in Lightroom that automatically imports the photo to Lr, applies Metadata and Develop presets and also automatically put the photo in a synced collection. There by I can view, or tweet or instagram the photo right from my iPhone instantly now matter where in the world I am at the time. It takes about 3 minutes from the time I take the picture til the time is shows up in Lightroom mobile. The problem is that is I can only sync one catalog and thus I have to choose to sync the iMac or the macbook and thus shutting out one half of my business model.

I would LOVE the ability to sync more than one catalog at a time. I keep my family/personal photos in one catalog (and a totally different drive for that matter) and my freelance work related stuff in a totally different catalog. I typically keep the work related stuff synced so I can show it to potential clients right on my Android tablet (yes I said Android, feel free to remember that base of users Adobe and roll out the changes on par with iOS not 9 months later) but it would be nice to be able to access family moments as well. Perhaps when Lightroom launches on my android device you first get a screen with "Catalog A, B C, etc" tap on the catalog you would like to look at and it pulls it up. I don't know much about the programming aspect of it, but it seems that having that "top layer" where you are selecting which catalog you are working with from the start would make it simple enough. I am totally fine with having to close one catalog and open another if need be, just let me access multiple catalogs.

My question is can Lr connect and sync with both a mobile catalog and a local catalog? For example, I take some photos, download them to my Surface Pro 3 for storage and initial processing, then upload them to Lr Mobile. When I get back to my desktop, then connect to Lr Mobile and import the photos into my main catalog. This would save having to export to a catalog on my SP3 and then import into my main catalog. It saves a step and takes advantage of Lr Mobiles capabilities.

Furthermore, Light Mobile for iOS allows you to take pictures using DNG capture. The caveat, is you must be running iOS 10 and have a 12MP camera (i.e. iPhone 6s/6s Plus and newer).

Lightroom Mobile and Web are at heart, cloud based technology. I'd expect that multiple catalogs would also be this way as Adobe have used this before, as Madison Bond points out in an earlier post, within Adobe Revel's high-res cloud storage (albeit they were called Libraries in what was pretty much Lr Mobile's predecessor).

If Adobe could implement this within their cloud based Lightroom options then it will be interesting to see how this integrates within Lightroom Desktop and multiple catalogs there.

I've been using Lightroom professionally for about 8 years now, and have loved the developments I have seen in it. That said, I found it very hard for me to use Lightroom as a single catalog system because performance and storage become a real problem. I use a fully loaded Surface Pro 4 for all of my photo and video processing, and I'm often mobile. I carry external hard drives and use a separate catalog for each job I do. This gives me the best performance and storage solution.

The thing I miss is the ability to pick up my tablet and work on an edit when using a full computer setup is not practical. My hope is that Adobe finds a way to fully leverage the cloud. It would be awesome if I could publish a catalog or collection to my cloud account, allowing me to seamlessly work on the go. I don't think I'm alone in my crazy start/stop schedule, and this kind of thing would help me to be really productive.

I love Lightroom, but really don't think it has really leveraged the cloud well. In fact, Lightroom really doesn't point to my Creative Cloud storage very easily. I have to drill down to the location of it on disk, rather than just simply point to Creative Cloud to import images. I hope Lightroom CC 2017 has better ways to leverage the cloud. That is what I need most.

I work with a Mac desktop and a Mac Book Pro laptop. I use a separate catalog on each computer. I have not found a good way to blend my photos. I was hoping that Lightroom Mobile would be a solution. So far I am only using Lightroom Mobile on my Desktop Catalog. I was going to try adding photos from my laptop so I came to this conversation for advise.

Here is what I have found works... I have Google Drive, but I hear it works with Dropbox etc. I moved the Lightroom folders that were in my Pictures Folder (PC, mac may put them in a different place) to My Google Drive. I have the Google Drive App installed on my PC, both tower and desktop, so it looks like it is another Windows folder. (That is key) So I point LIghtroom to that folder where the catalog is. I still keep my photos on a totally different networked drive, but everything LIghtroom Catalog related syncs via the cloud. The only hitch I have discovered with Google Drive is you need to "pause" the PC sync tool before you launch Lightroom or you get an error message. Just unpause Google Drive when you close LR and it will sync your catalog. The other thing is don't expect to switch between machines instantly, the files need to sync. But if you are working on the tower for example and want to pick up on your laptop once you drive to your home that is usually enough time and you will find your catalog synced. Google it, there are several articles describing the workflow.

Brian, that is a plausible hack, but beware that when I tried that it began corrupting large catalogs because sometimes Google Drive wouldn't write the entire file in one go. Same problem with Dropbox.

Syncthing seems to do okay, although it requires a lot of setup. This is made easier with SyncTrayzor.

How do you deal with the fact that program preferences aren't stored with the catalog? (Or at least, they're not on a PC.)

This is not a good workaround I'm sorry. How much money do we have to spend already on cloud storage. I paid a subscription for LR, PS, and CC mobile. I really shouldn't have to use 3rd party cloud services with crazy workarounds. Adobe needs to get off their lazy asses and IMPLEMENT multi-cat syncing. It has been YEARS with complaints!

Given my work flow I do not find Lightroom stable when opening a catalog with over 10,000 photos. Single catalogs allow me to work this way but the way LR does it now is not beneficial to the end user. I vote for a catalog to be like an album when syncing.

Im one of those guys who has multiple catalogs trying to keep personal and business separate. I would like to see in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC Mobile work together to sync the multiple catalogs so when Im done editing to sync the catalogs to mobile to when Im with family I can show pictures from the family catalog and in business opportunities to show the business catalog... I don't want to stick them all together in one..

+1 for multi-catalog synching to Lightroom CC. My use case involves having two catalogs that I maintain. One for my personal photos and the other for my photography business. I do not ever want to co-mingle these images, and my approach to organizing and keywording them within their respective catalogs is entirely different. Therefore, I'd like to be able to synch Collections from both catalogs (personal and work) to Lightroom CC under a single Adobe ID. Thanks!

I totally agree! I use Lightroom CC on two different computers for 2 different purposes and can't sync my favorites from both across to my phone, I wish there were a solution, this has been a problem for 5 years already!!

LR Classic=Lightroom. Nobody I know uses LR CC nor do I want to use a half assed raw editor that syncs everything to a cloud. I want LR Classic to return to Lightroom CC and focus solely on that. Ditch the user friendly CC your money comes from pros. Accommodate or isolate us and watch the product take a hit financially. Other competitors will release a full accommodating program in the end which will address OUR needs. Getting ready to abandon Adobe altogether at this point.

I couldn't agree more. Some of us here have been vocal about this for years now, and nothing has changed. Not only that, I've been scolded here on the forums for complaining about the LR CC and Classic CC change and have been told more than once that this is not the forum for that, to which I say "bullS$$t". This is the place.

Adobe has ruined LR. The work flow between LR Classic and LR CC is a mess. Trying to use an iPad with a camera in the field is a mess, but I've been told here in the forums that it is Apple's fault. Again, I think that's nonsense. Adobe needs to own this. Adobe needs to do user testing with real users in the field to see how the current "work flow" is a complete non-starter, and the LR CC features are wholly lacking.

I recently did a photo shoot in Honduras. I took my laptop and used LR CC Classic and PS, because LR CC is such a mess. But Adobe for years now has kept trying to put lipstick on a pig and convince us that are complaints don't belong in the forums, and that things will improve with time. Nothing could be further from the truth. The program manager that thought up this ill-advised scheme should be fired publicly.

I commented on this thread years ago and still get replies on it. Sadly, I don' think Adobe is ever going to overcome this limitation. That's fine. I've moved on. I've been using other tools since last year, and I'm pretty sure that when my plan comes up for renewal this fall that I will choose not to renew. Sad really, but with new tools the that are iterating faster than Adobe is with LR, and at a lower price, there's little point in holding out hope.

I agree. My loyalty toward Adobe is not worth the frustration anymore. I'm so sick of wasting time with slow software that triples my editing time. I don't even do more than basic corrections and syncing in LR. Spot editing, brush masking I leave to PS as LR is embarrassing slow. They've ignored us for years and I'm ready to put my money toward competitors who care.